


The Sister and The Lover

by Walkinthegarden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Female Friendship, Gen, House Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Jon dies, Mental Health Issues, Queen Daenerys, Queen Sansa, Queen in the North, R plus L equals J, Shae isn't a bitch, The North remembers, Ygritte lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walkinthegarden/pseuds/Walkinthegarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa saves Ygritte, Ygritte saves Sansa.</p>
<p>Ygritte never thought she could love someone that calls themselves a royal, she never thought she could live by the southern people's standards, but she would do anything for Sansa. Jon had loved Sansa, she knees to protect her for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sister and The Lover

The men stand still as they wait in straight long lines. Nearly a fortnight ago they received word that the Queen in the North is coming for a visit, two name days after her assent to the throne.

 

They are eager for her arrival, having spent the past fortnight preparing. They even allowed you to bathe and gave you new clothes so you can be chained to the stables for the Queen’s inspection. They say they will let her decide what to do with you. While Jon Snow, in his last hours, begged for you to be spared, keeping you safe from the rapers is a difficult task and Castle Black has little food to spare for a prisoner.

 

“Ygritte,” Sam says gently, laying his gloved hand on your arm, “you don’t have much need to worry; they say she is ruthless but fair, and it was not you that killed Jon.”

 

You say nothing in return, continuing the silence you haven’t broken since your capture. The large man sighs before going off to take his place in the line and you want to thank him, but you don’t.

 

A horn blows as the large doors are opened. Two men on large black horses enter first. They observe the people of the Night’s Watch with narrowed eyes before finally turning and giving a nod. The first in the procession must be the Queen, not that you know anything about rulers south of the Wall. She is undeniably beautiful, with hair redder then yours. Even seated side saddle in a gown of winter blue and a bronze crown of swords on her head, somehow she looks more powerful then any man you’ve ever seen.

 

You’ve heard that they call her the Red Wolf, not for her hair, but for the trail of bloody corpses she leaves in her wake. They say she cuts through those that wronged her family herself and that she is crueler than any man when it comes to them. Sitting atop her horse she is still tall, looking very regal. You think maybe her face was once soft and beautiful like the women of the stories you’ve heard, but it doesn’t look that way anymore. Now her face is harsh and unforgiving, with striking blue eyes colder then ice and slightly narrowed. She is still beautiful, but she’s been hardened to steel.

 

It takes you a minute to realize that she is searching for something in each face of the crows, as if she looks for one in particular. After a moment she breaks her eyes away from the men of the Night’s Watch to turn to a man on the horse beside her.

 

“Where is Jon?” the Queen asks bitingly.

 

You swallow hard at the question. There is venom in this Queen’s voice, the kind only present when the person in question is known to the speaker and well loved. Only a small part of it makes you fear for your life. The other part becomes angry, making you wonder if perhaps Jon ever loved you at all. You take in the Queen’s long fire hair and you can’t help but question whether he took to you because you reminded him of this red haired beauty from his home. Had he loved this girl that is now a Queen? Had he just thought you a good enough replacement?

 

“We had word he was here Your Grace,” the man next to her says nervously before turning to face the Commander. “Where is Jon Snow?”

 

The Commander’s face turns whiter then white. “He is gone, killed by raiders,” the man stutters. If you weren’t so angry you might feel sorry for the Queen, as her expression crumples under the weight of the news. Her eyes squeeze shut for a moment before opening again to reveal a blackness that makes all around her step back.

 

“No, no he can’t be,” the Queen hisses, fury burning behind her dead eyes and her jaw going tense. Suddenly it all clicks in your head. You remember him speaking of a sister, even teased you how you had similar hair. This woman is not Jon’s lover, but his sister.

 

“We have one of the wildings, Your Grace; Jon’s wilding girl. In his death he asked us to spare her. We have her here.” The Commander points to you and while you feel you should be frightened, you’re not. You don’t think this Queen will hurt you, not if she loved Jon.

 

“A wilding girl? Jon loved a girl?” the Queen asks, turning her head as if the fact that Jon could love a girl is a foreign thought to her. Maybe it is, what had he called himself? A bastard, doomed to remain alone unless he wants to risk fathering more of his kind.

 

It takes a minute before she turns to look at you. She observes you with cold eyes before swinging down from her horse. A man of the Night’s Watch offers to help her but she ignores him. Her cloak is gray and there is a direwolf on her breast with words written beneath it you cannot read. Jon spoke of royals being bathed in purples, golds, silvers, and reds. You thinks such color would have looked foolish on the Queen, her gray makes her appear menacing and powerful.

 

“Jon loved you,” she says to you, not a question but a statement.

 

“She has not spoken since her capture Your Grace,” Sam tries to say, though everyone but the Queen looks at him in annoyance. This woman doesn’t say anything to him, you’re not even sure she heard him. She is staring into your eyes, searching for something.

 

“Unchain her, she will sleep in my chambers,” the Queen says, turning on her heel and gliding toward the King’s Tower. She disappears up the steps with two men at her heels.

 

They unchain you and one of the men attempts to escort you to the Northern Queen, but her guards stop him and they tell you to go up alone.

 

You begin to sweat beneath the furs the farther up the steps you go. It appears the brothers were overzealous in their preparation of the tower for the Queen’s arrival.

 

There is a woman outside the door, waiting for you. She gives you a cold smile before opening the door. You enter it to see the Queen sitting at a table with beautiful game of some sort spread out in front of her. The pieces are wooden and carved with fine detail, but their beauty pales in comparison to the Queen. She is dressed in a gray shift made of silk. There are beads strung on the front laces and a white direwolf embroidered up the side. The sleeves of the dress are thin straps, making you wonder why a Queen of the _North_ would own such a garment.

 

“The Southern Queen had it made for me,” she answers, though you swear you didn’t voice the question. She stops moving the pieces to look at you, her steel eyes showing no warmth, just cold detachment. She returns her gaze to the pieces, moving them in a pattern that means nothing to you but you know means everything to her. There are wolf heads, fish heads, twin towers united by a bridge, and what looks to be a flayed man. She moves them almost obsessively, in the same pattern, over and over. Finally she stops, as if remembering you are there, but she does not look up. She instead stares at one of the wolf pieces, slightly different than the others. “Had he lived, Jon might have caused peace between the South and the North. His death makes his existence obsolete, politically anyway.” She rises from her seat and turns away to look out the window, where the snow falls heavy.

 

You observe her, still silent. She is not like Jon described her. She is not naïve and silly. You can tell she has been through hardship you can barely imagine. She is haunted. The dead twist her mind, making her half mad but all the more functional for it.

 

“Did Jon ever speak of me?” she asks you. The question is spoken by a Queen but asked by a child. She is asking you for something, though you’re not sure what. Jon never told you much about her. He said she resented his birth but still showed occasional fondness to him; no matter how cold she’d been in their childhood, Jon had loved her dearly. Her eyes drop and her moment of vulnerability is gone. “No,” she says softly, “I suppose not.”

 

You glance at the two men in the room. One stands beside the fireplace, clearly cooking beneath his armor, but standing tall and stiff with unseeing eyes, like he would like his presence to be forgotten. The other is sitting on the other side of the fireplace, a book across his lap and his eyes fixed on the text, but you know he is listening to every word as the page has not changed the whole time you’ve been here.

 

“No matter, Jon was my family and I had such precious few in the end. If Jon loved you I will have you with me. Shae can teach you how to be my handmaiden. I will be fair to you. If you would like I can have a tutor brought to teach you to read. You may do what you wish and you may leave when you like. This offer is more than fair, do you accept?”

 

You nod, because you will die if she decides to leave you here. You can tell she is content with your answer. She sits at the table once again and picks up where she left off with her pieces. She moves the wolves and fish to the towers. She next moves the flayed men beside them before removing the fish and the wolves. Then she resets the map and starts over.

 

She allows you to lay beside her in her bed for the next few nights, and slowly you learn to do as she says. She has no patience for you, but when you give Shae a look of frustration, the handmaiden warns you that you know nothing of what Sansa has gone through. As far as you can tell, Shae is the only person that calls the Queen, Sansa.

 

You accompany her back to Winterfell and fall into a rhythm. What would Jon think of you now? His wilding woman is a handmaiden to his sister, though you refuse to curtsey. You are nothing like the woman he left behind. He’d tease you for this, mock you, but you loved Jon and Jon loved her; you have to look after her for him.

 

The longer you’re in Winterfell, the more you learn about your Queen. The whispers are everywhere, you don’t know what to believe. They tell you how the Queen pled for her father’s life, screaming as her betrothed ordered her father’s death before her eyes. They tell you how that man she was supposed to be married to made her look at her father’s severed head and laughed as she cried. Some even say that this boy-king had her stripped and raped before the court, that she screamed and cried and no one came to her aid. You’ve helped the Queen dress, you’ve seen the scars on her back and shoulders, the whispers become believable.

 

You find the letter one day, the one the Queen wrote to her brother, the deceased King of the North. She calls her father traitor and that the crown has been generous in their decision to allow the Starks to live on despite this indiscretion. The Queen catches you, and you will never forget what she says.

 

_“Kings enjoy murdering Lords of Winterfell.”_

 

You are with the Queen when she receives the invitation from the Southern Queen to her wedding. You do not miss the flash of anger that crosses her eyes. They whisper that this Southern Queen holds no love for Starks. In turn, the Sansa hold no love for Targaryens

 

You accompany her South, with Shae and the rest of Winterfell. You braid her hair simply and twist it into a bun before securing her crown in her hair. When she meets the Southern Queen, you know there is hatred between them. The invitation was a formality, an expectation.

 

They tell you that this Queen’s father burned your Queen’s uncle and grandfather alive. They tell you the Southern Queen praised the death of Queen Sansa’s father at the hands of the bastard boy-king. You learn that it has been discovered that Jon was the product of both families, the son of a Targaryen son and a Stark daughter. They whisper that had he lived there would have been an alliance between the two halves of Westeros. You remember what she said that first night you met her, and it makes sense.

 

The wedding is a joyous affair, but you stand behind your Queen, ready to cut through anyone that dares harm her. It gives you a good view of everything, including the Northern guests that sit silently in their seats, sipping wine and eating quietly. None of them have moved since the beginning of the festivities, offers to dance have been politely refused, offers for more wine have been dismissed. They are making it clear that they do not want to be there. You don’t blame them, there is one thing your Queen loves, only one, her family. She has lost everything else, cares for nothing other than the family that was cruelly taken from her.

 

“She’s lucky the Queen hasn’t killed her, for what her father did to our poor Queen’s family,” someone whispers.

 

You look at Shae who stands beside you. There has to be more to this story, of why the Northerners will not leave the Queen’s side. Shae will know, and Shae has gotten good at reading your looks.

 

“Sansa’s good-sister was slain at a wedding, the last Queen of the North. The North have lost too many rulers, they will not lose another.”

 

The goodbye between this Southern Queen and your own are chilled at best. The look they share is one of contempt. You realize something neither Queen does. You notice a ring of people from the Southern Kingdoms, all with neutral faces or masks of false joy. Shae tells you that almost every family has been slighted somehow by the Southern Queen, also known as the Mother of Dragons. She tells you that Tommen Lannister, Myrcella Martell, Shireen Baratheon, and Margaery Tyrell were all put to the sword. Tommen and Myrcella were killed for being the supposed children of the Usurper, Shireen for being the daughter of a self-declared King, and Margaery for marrying three false Kings. You smirk to yourself, because you and Shae realize what your Queen does not. The people do not love this Southern Queen. They see an ally in the Queen, your Queen.

 

It isn’t long after that the Kingdoms rise up, the heads of most of the families coming to your Queen for her help.

 

_“You know what it is like to be victimized for the sins of your father. That woman killed Myrcella and Tommen, your niece and nephew by your marriage to my nephew_.” – Kevan Lannister

 

_“Margaery tried to help you. In a life where things had gone a bit more right, you and I might have been man and wife. The Dragon Queen killed her for trying to survive this game.”_ –Willas Tyrell

 

_“We helped her rise to power and she repaid us by murdering Trystane’s wife. He loved her and she took him away. Dorne did nothing when Elia was murdered and we will not stand by and allow this woman to take our family from their beds.”_ – Arianne Martell

 

There is no one to speak for the Baratheon daughter, but if there is one thing your Queen despises above all else, it is senseless murder of children. You sit in her chamber and watch her for nearly a fortnight worth of nights, pacing back and forth. She does not want to live through another war, but you know she will in the end. You aren’t wrong.

 

She has no heir, but she rides into battle with her soldiers anyway. You accompany her, anything to feel a bow in your hand again. You haven’t lost your touch.

 

The battle lasts only seven moons. Your Queen is victorious, but she refuses the throne of the South. Instead she melts the damned thing before declaring each realm as it’s own Kingdom. She crowns five Kings and a Queen before returning home to Winterfell.

 

She will have to marry one day, but you know that day is not today or any day soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Ygritte is OC, I'll admit that.


End file.
